Why do websites use “email” and “username” interchangeably as log-in credentials?
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There are two main reasons that emails take the place of usernames in many cases
1. People are unlikely to forget their email address because they use it a lot for a variety of things. But a username they created for one website? They may easily forget it. Therefore, using an email is advantageous to ensure people remember it.
2. Most services need your email anyways. So if you can combine the username with the email, you can make things more efficient and have fewer fields.
For some context, email used to be less common. Not everyone had one, but they still might want to make an account with some websites. So people got used to having usernames for websites. But later on when emails became super common, some places still liked calling it a username even when they just end up using your email instead.
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